2018 Italian general election

The 2018 Italian general election was held on 4 March 2018 after the Italian Parliament was dissolved by President Sergio Mattarella on 28 December 2017. Voters were electing the 630 members of the Chamber of Deputies and the 315 elective members of the Senate of the Republic for the 18th legislature of the Italian Republic since 1948. The election took place concurrently with the Lombard and Lazio regional elections. No party or coalition gained an absolute majority in the parliament, even though the centre-right coalition won a plurality of seats as a coalition, and the Five Star Movement (M5S) won a plurality of seats as an individual party.

The centre-right coalition, whose main party was the right-wing League led by Matteo Salvini, emerged with a plurality of seats in the Chamber of Deputies and in the Senate, while the anti-establishment M5S led by Luigi Di Maio became the party with the largest number of votes. The centre-left coalition, led by former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of the governing Democratic Party (PD), came third; however, no political group or party won an outright majority, resulting in a hung parliament.

The 2018 Italian government formation lasted three months and the first Conte government was formed on 1 June between the M5S and the League, whose leaders both became deputy prime ministers in a populist coalition government led by the M5S-linked independent Giuseppe Conte as Prime Minister of Italy. The 2019 Italian government crisis started when the League withdrew its support of the government and the coalition ended with Conte's resignation on 20 August. A new M5S-led coalition was formed with the centre-left PD and the Free and Equal left-wing parliamentary group, with Conte at its head, on 5 September 2019. Amid the 2021 Italian government crisis, the second Conte government was replaced by a national unity government headed by Mario Draghi.

In the 2013 Italian general election held in March, none of the three main alliances (the centre-right coalition led by Silvio Berlusconi, the centre-left coalition led by Pier Luigi Bersani, and the anti-establishment, populist Five Star Movement (M5S) led by Beppe Grillo) won an outright majority in the Italian Parliament. After a failed attempt to form a government by Bersani, then-secretary of the Democratic Party (PD), and Giorgio Napolitano's reluctantly-accepted second term as President of Italy in the 2013 Italian presidential election held in April, Enrico Letta, Bersani's deputy, received the task of forming a grand coalition government. The Letta Cabinet consisted of the PD, Berlusconi's People of Freedom (PdL), Civic Choice (SC), the Union of the Centre (UDC), and the Italian Radicals (RI).

On 16 November 2013, Berlusconi re-launched Forza Italia (FI), named like the previous Forza Italia party (1994–2009). Additionally, Berlusconi announced that FI would be opposed to Letta's government, causing the split from the PdL/FI of a large group of deputies and senators led by Minister of Interior Angelino Alfano, who launched the alternative New Centre-Right (NCD) party and remained loyal to the government, which also came to include the Populars for Italy (PpI).

Following the election of Matteo Renzi as secretary of the PD in December 2013, there were persistent tensions culminating in Letta's resignation as Prime Minister in February 2014. The Renzi Cabinet was based on the same coalition, including the NCD, but in a new fashion. The new Prime Minister had a strong mandate from the PD, which was reinforced in May by the party's strong showing in the 2014 European Parliament election in Italy; the 2015 Italian presidential election resulted in the election of Sergio Mattarella, a former PD member, as the president of Italy in January. While in power, Renzi implemented several reforms, including the Italian electoral law of 2015 (Italicum) that would be declared partially unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court of Italy in January 2017 and replaced by the Italian electoral law of 2017 (Rosatellum), and a relaxation of labour and employment laws known as the Jobs Act with the intention of boosting economic growth that would also found by the same court to be partially unconstitutional in September 2018, which was upheld in July 2020, plus a thorough reform of the public administration, the simplification of the civil trial, the recognition of same-sex unions (not marriages), and the abolition of several minor taxes.

As a result of the Libyan Civil War, a major problem faced by Renzi was the high level of illegal immigration to Italy. During his tenure, there was an increase in the number of immigrants rescued at sea being brought to southern Italian ports, prompting criticism from the M5S, FI, and the Northern League, and causing a loss of popularity for Renzi. Into 2016, opinion polls registered the PD's strength, the growth of the M5S, the Northern League, and Brothers of Italy (FdI), FI's decline, SC's disappearance, and the replacement of Left Ecology Freedom (SEL) with Italian Left (SI).

In the 2016 Italian constitutional referendum, a constitutional reform proposed by Renzi's government and duly approved by Parliament was rejected 59% to 41%. Under the reform, the Senate would have been composed of 100 members, of which 95 are regional representatives and five are presidential appointees. Following defeat in December 2016, Renzi stepped down as Prime Minister and was replaced by Minister of Foreign Affairs Paolo Gentiloni, another PD member and deputy.